My Geek Box Seems To Have A Problem…

Monthly subscription boxes aimed at the geek demographic have profilerated. Started by Loot Crate, followed by Nerd Block, then copied by everybody. So you know that, before long, something was going to go wrong.

British service My Geek Box was started earlier in the year then bought out by The Hut Group. But in recent months it hasn’t been plain sailing.

The deal was that when you signed up you got a free Welcome Box and would pay £18 every month for subsequent boxes. That’s what’s meant to happen anyway. Here are some of the messages on their Facebook page.

James Walker Why do you refuse to refund me for an item you “have in stock” with a despatch date of the 30th November 2015.
When it’s obvious that you don’t have stock.
JUST REFUND ME MY MONEY AND CANCEL THE ITEM

Jon Hansford Still waiting for the welcome box subscribed in NOV you took money twice from me and have sent f-ck all think something is starting to stink with you guys

Andrew Imrie Thieving bastards took money from our account twice and no boxes delivered. Heart broken 8 year old as this was for his birthday. Trading standards informed

Kim Hillhouse Still waiting.3 messages to them,and getting nowhere xx

Rebecki Burdon Been waiting since October after now I’ve been charged another £17.99 even though I only signed up for the one month subscription.

Martin Gough You won’t be happy when it does arrive. Its crap, mine had about a fivers worth of tat inside. I cancelled my subscription and they still take money from me.

Laura Webb I been waiting since Oct for my. Welcome box lol

Stephen Jolliffe i signed up and paid in october, still not recieved anything, no welcome box, no star wars box, no despatch date, and no monthly box

Kim Hillhouse Removing my comments ,but wont refund me my money??

Rebecca Powell Thanks for taking out 17.99 yesterday without my consent. I only subscribed thankfully for one month and never received my box just a free one with awfully cheap stuff in . Phoned my bank to stop u taking anymore payments out your bunch of rip of merchants and conveniently no telephone number to call so u can be as rude in an email as u want . AVOID AVOiD

Louise Woodrow I want to say I’m glad I’m not the only one, but I’m not glad. How many more people are they stealing from?

Ben Hale Nice! You are deleting comments!!! No welcome box, two lots of payments taken out yet 2 missing boxes as well! WTF

Bill Marr AVOID AT ALL COSTS – one of the worst companies i’ve ever had the misfortune of using took money form my bank with no aurthorization this is after i canceled my first order as their customer services and website both said different things and we never recived the box we had paid for in the first place.

And that’s all from their own Facebook page. But enough comments have been deleted for customers to form their own undeleteable page My Geek Box Owes Me Money/Boxes where the rhetoric gets even worse.

Larrah Loo Hi, I joined just last month on a deal for a free welcome box and a box for £16.99. I haven’t seen either yet, apparently the welcome box is out of stock and I left it too late for it to be sent in November. Anyway, I’ve been charged another £17 for what I presume is next months box. After numerous messages (each taking 48 hours response time) they are now saying that they have charged me another £17 for Decembers…yep, the one I’ve already paid for…and I wont receive jans box or a refund. Does anyone out there have a number to actually talk to this bunch? I fully support a watchdog on these scammers.

Graham Foxall Hi, so I joined GB in October didnt like the box so cancelled. I deleted my payment information. They still managed to take my money for November. I complained and demanded a refund 10 days before the boxes were sent for Nov. They sent the box anyway claiming I cancelled too late to stop it. They’ve now taken Decembers payment. My bank is investigating.

And for those who do get a box…

Leeza Rossouw Soooooo… here is the latest to the world of problems with My geek box…I received my “Welcome Box” which was a Septembers Dark Side box. I didn’t mind as I wasn’t subbed at that point and hadn’t received that box.. HOWEVER, the face mask is torn, and the box was damaged for the breaking bad mug.. I could have gifted it but it just looks “preowned.” It looks like this was a box returned back to them… and they’ve sent it to me. The comic also has imperfections again…. I really liked the tshirt but they sent me a Mens 2xl. Nobody I know can wear that and I definitely can’t.. I’ve sent them a very strongly worded email. Sigh!

So many people haven’t received what they paid for, have had multiple payments taken out of their bank account, without receiving boxes, without authorising rolling subscriptions and even after they have cancelled.

Right now it looks like they don’t have enough people to cope with the demand or deal with the correspondence but the solution doesn’t seem to have been to hire more people to cope with it, just try and muddle through.

The best advice to people is to try and cancel the payments through your bank or credit card and get the payments made refunded if you can.

Bleeding Cool contacted My Geek Box yesterday but have yet to get a response. So basically we’re like a number of their customers then…

UPDATE: Two days after initial inquiries, My Geek Box has finally responded to Bleeding Cool enquiries, saying “Unfortunately we will not be able to discuss information with you.” So that’s that.